Abstract
Pacific Island Nations are at great risk from climate change impacts such as storms and sea level rise. In the next century, they face the possibility of losing their homes and land, and having to relocate elsewhere; though questions of to where, how, and when remain open. To better understand these uncertain futures, we look to the past for answers on how these precarious circumstances have come about, examining the contribution of racist colonialism to environmental destruction and climate vulnerability. Telling the story of two islands—Nauru and Banaba—we imagine how it may be possible to begin approaching climate justice through international policy. Thus far, climate negotiations at the international scale have failed to meet the needs of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. However, we see a possibility for just futures with the incorporation of a mechanism on loss and damage that must hold countries accountable for their destructive pasts.
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Notes
- 1.
After international protests, Australia established new “relocation” centers on the Christmas Islands, a policy carried out in order to circumvent the arrival of “boat people” on the mainland until 2013. Presently, a new policy has been designed to deter refugees, called “Operation Sovereign Borders.” Carried out as a military operation, the policy mandates mandatory detention for all refugees, about 10,000 per year, with numbers only increasing, especially since 2010 (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/16/australia-climate-change-refugee-status).
- 2.
These terms are problematic in themselves, but are common parlance within the UNFCCC to distinguish between these two groups and so will be utilized here.
- 3.
The concern in this case being that the Agreement would not pass through the U.S. Congress for ratification with such language, making its success on the international stage extremely doubtful.
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Falzon, D., Batur, P. (2018). Lost and Damaged: Environmental Racism, Climate Justice, and Conflict in the Pacific. In: Batur, P., Feagin, J. (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76757-4_22
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